time and the people we lose
In the past few years, I have grown very reflective of Time. I read somewhere, that in the current moment we are the youngest we will ever be, and the oldest we have ever been, if you take it slow with this sentence and ponder a bit on it, you will realize how deep this is.
We are born and then starts the journey of getting older, each passing minute, each passing day, we never get younger, just older. For us, in the moment, we think time has stopped, but if you zoom out, you will see that time was passing by and that months vanish in a snap.
Life is like a stream downhill, where at every bend we lose something or gain something. I was a young teenager when I lost my mother, it has been more than a decade and a half since losing her, I still feel her warmth sometimes, like sitting on seashore with the waves gently touching your feet, it is warm, like a sort of a feather touch on your hand, similar to how you would feel when somebody you look up to keeps their hand on your shoulder. It feels like a fleeting moment in time.
My father passed away when I was in my early twenties, it has not been as long as my mother, but that grief has still not faded away. It has reduced considerably, but the grief has not been replaced by the warmth yet, it takes almost a decade or more for acceptance, and until that acceptance grief usually stays, though with time, the pangs of grief gradually decrease in their intensity and rigour. It hits you on a Wednesday evening at 7pm, without an incoming signal and you retreat into a cocoon, your mind starts playing VHS tapes of when the person was there with you, the moments of laughter with them, their smiles, their likes and dislikes, how arguing or fighting with them was a sheer waste of time and energy and the regret that you should have treated them better, it's inevitable. But then that's life, sometimes you lose, sometimes you win again. Losses stay with you more than wins. Somehow the human heart loves aching rather than thumping with joy.
You will lose people along this journey of life, and parents being the most important set of people among them, because it is their love, the only love, that is unconditional, rest everybody loves you for a reason. Your parents love you more than you love them, you will love your child more than he/she will love you back, that is the truth. Yet this journey is also not only about your parents and your relationship with them, you will have friends, somebody who shares the same era of time with you, you will fall in love, if you are fortunate enough, and have a child if you want to, if you think there is more to life than materialism. All of them together somehow make life bearable, and at moments worth it.
Life is not like the movies, where everything ends well. Life is chaotic, no rules apply, humanity has created rules for themselves which they themselves break all the time, everybody will hurt you, it's just about the ones who you are willing to suffer for. Pain will demand to be felt, Grief will strangle you, it's just about holding on. And unlike anything else Life will end mid-sentence.
